


The Light House

by alernun



Category: X-Men (Comicverse), X-Men - All Media Types, X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) - Fandom, X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Anal Play, Canon compliant illness, Charles Being British, Dark!Charles, Discussions of Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Language, M/M, Old!cherik, Orgasm Delay/Denial, Snark, Violence, Young!Cherik
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-31
Updated: 2014-07-31
Packaged: 2018-02-11 04:37:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,519
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2053860
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alernun/pseuds/alernun
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Charles reflects on his life, legacy, and relationship with Erik after it is confirmed that he has a terminal brain tumor. Sort of the same universe as "The Advocate" but you don't have to read that first. I know there's death in this guys but I promise I leave you happy!!! Give it a try!</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Light House

They tell me that I'm dying. I knew already, of course. One cannot possess a mind like mine, the great neurological watchdog of the world, and not know when something has gone awry. The tumor is quiet today, nesting at the base of my brain stem like those odious slug creatures out of Star Trek, just waiting for the day my DNA apes Kahn, and gives the order to finish me for good.

That day is soon, so at last I told Erik. He raged and ranted. That's usually Erik's reaction to loss. Fight fight fight. I sat and bore it all like I always do, grateful that his other go-to coping strategy, (run run run), had not won the internal match. Then he entered the bargaining phase of grief as I traced the salt and pepper swirls at his temples, and rambled on about experimental treatments, body-transfer, miracles of science that he barely grasped. When I gently reminded him that, of the two of us, I was bound to be ahead of him in this discipline, and that I barely survived the last body transfer at full stamina, his broad shoulders finally sagged in my arms, and he cried his silent tears. 

Defeat has never come easily to Erik. 

I, however, have become inured to it over the years. We British are perhaps the only race on Earth that can convince you, as we pack our bags and high-tail it out of the war zone, that our defeat was our idea. A token of our faith in you. 

I cut my teeth on loss at Erik's hands. By now the whole world knows the story and then some. Modern media has made us modern royalty, and I am ever the Patroclus to his Achilles, the new Princess Di. We're all over the Genoshian currency, the telly and the covers of monographs assigned in Polysci classes, Magneto and his demure, crippled Professor X. This is, of course, somewhere left of full truth. But I rarely correct the stereotypical assumptions of the outside world. For one, I haven't the inclination, and for another, they're half right. I am utterly' Erik's. 

But he, too, is utterly and completely mine. We are each other's primary disease and medicine. Sometimes, like when we first met, the fever overcomes us, and we devour each other, two souls desperately trying to assert sameness. Other times, like after Cuba, fever becomes hypothermia, pox, and despair, and we do not, cannot, speak for years. 

My favorite moments of this life are when the disease is in remission, and we are able to look at one another with clear eyes and see our mate. Tonight, as I nurse the troubled chimera of his nightmares and monitor the tumor, one memory of remission keeps floating to the surface. Normally I don't indulge in such nostalgia, the here-and-now being quite enough, thank you very much. But tonight I am blue, and we are old, and I am afraid. 

...Back then, when we were young, we barely felt fear. We were too high on the adrenaline of climbing our respective pedestals, and making our place in the world. I had reopened the school and was just getting resigned once more to the loss of my legs. People make much of my situation even now, calling it a handicap and patronizing me at conferences and such, but in truth, when I realized exactly what my undrugged mind was capable of, I learned not to miss walking. After all, I could see, and hear, and control, and fly through brain waves. If I wanted a good run, like an old addict perhaps craves a cigarette at parties, Hank was always willing to oblige me and let me sit in a corner of his consciousness while he exercised. I got by, as they say, with a little help from my friends. 

It was an ordinary Wednesday during this phase of my life when an old friend trespassed through my French doors, and woke me with a tracing thumb along my cheek bone. 

“Charles.”

I came easily awake, never really at home in other people's dreams, and assessed the situation. My heart did a little sinking somersault; he was in uniform. A pleasure visit brought him to my bedside in Armani T-shirts and kakkis. Even when terse, he was helmet-less on a pleasure visit. That night, it was all Kevlar, fuchsia, and the goddamned tin cap. Even worse, he was drenched, most likely due to a stubborn air borne slog through a summer storm. I grimaced. 

“Right. Why don't we skip to the opening scene, yeah?”

“I need you to come with me.”

He stood military straight at the side of my bed and held out an arm, but this was a formality. 

“And do I have a choice?”

“Don't make me say it.”

“No no, certainly not. Wouldn't want to put you out. Never mind it's 10 o’clock in the evening on a school night and I have a job to do. The great and powerful Magneto can't be made to feel like an abductor.”

The last bit was cruel, I knew, but I wanted to crack his Swiss Guard composure. It was small payment for finding me tousled in striped pajamas. 

“Please, Charles.” He said, softer. “It's important. I need you.” 

He was 45 years old (although he looked ten years younger). The circles that had etched themselves finely under his eyes were already beginning to look houndish. I was hopeless against them. 

“Oh alright Macbeth, but let's make this quick.” 

At this I pulled the blankets off and inclined my head. This was a symbol between us newly agreed upon, and meant that he had my consent to lift me. He did with ease, gathering me up and shielding my head against the wind before stepping out the 4th story window as if it were a stair case. Despite his clammy attire, I let myself relax into his warm wetness (the man gives off heat like a furnace, even now), thrilled by this astounding ability of his to make the very electrons in space cater to him, privy, at least, to my own mind's sanctity when a small part of me wondered if maybe, just maybe, we _were_ Gods. 

After about a mile, we stopped on the roof of a ware house where a child of perhaps four was waiting, midnight blue skin covered in goosebumps, pointed tail flicking about nervously. It was only much later that I learned of my relation to this remarkable boy. 

“Oh thanks be to God. It's dark and I am afraid.”

He burbled this in Russian, lamplight cat eyes full of un-shed tears as he clung to Magneto's cape. 

“The dark won't hurt you, Kurt.” Erik responded in the same language. I was startled when the tail found it's way around my waist. “Now take us to the light house, then go and find your mother.”

There was a momentary pressure, and darkness that made night feel bright as day. Then it was not just raining, but storming across a gray pre-dawn high above sandy shoals and choppy waves. Without another word, just a small “poof” of blue smoke, the child disappeared, and Erik and I were left to the maelstrom.

“Not exactly the Hilton!” I intoned above the racket, and let him carry me off the stairless balcony into a single circular room without glass in the windows, made entirely of what appeared to be black steel. The furnishings were Spartan and clearly crafted by his own hand; a latticed metal chair here, a crooked steel table there. There was a cot in the corner made with army surplus wool, damp from the rain and lumpy looking. 

The center of the room, however, was another matter entirely. I can't fully describe what existed there; maybe no one but Magneto can. “Black hole” was considered, and rejected for impossible. And yet...there was a dark absence of space, crackling with static and ozone, like a bomb just on the verge of detonating. 

“...Where are we?”

Erik put me down on the cot and held both his hands out to the Center. I felt a shift in the air, sickening and dangerous-and then a bolt of lightning shot out of the nothingness through the window, connecting with a lattice of another kind, a white and orderly net of electricity that seemed to take over the sky. Almost immediately after, something unseen in the distance shuddered with the trauma of a real explosion, outsounding the constant thunder. Even then, I felt no fear. Only curiosity and annoyance at his preoccupied silence. 

“What in the bleeding hell _is_ that? Hasn’t anyone ever told you not to shoot bolts of lighting in a glorified tuna can? You're not Zeus, you know. And what just-”

He silenced me with an index finger against my lips. His whole body looked tired, as if he'd just run a marathon. He collapsed next to me on the cot and finally seemed to come back to himself. 

“We're in Israel.” He murmured. “In the No Man's Land between the current war zone. A few Mossad agents are mutants. When I showed them what I'd been learning with electromagnetism, they let me build the light house. For the last week, I've been cloaking the major cities from Palestinian rocket fire while the IDF musters its forces for a counterstrike.”

“You...what?!” I sputtered. “Am I to understand that you dragged me out of bed so that I could aid and abet a violent and illegal occupation? One that features more rockets, no less. Where is that little boy? Tell him to bring me home right now.” 

Erik's gray eyes flashed with the lightning. “Israel has the right to exist, Charles.”

“Yes, the tricky bit though is in the geography, and those pesky indigenous people. The whole handover was dodgy at best.”

“You would know. It was _your_ country made the gift! And how dare you call those people indigenous. We were the first people. The Chosen People.”  
“Have your years in prison left room for Zionism too?” I asked quietly. “Don't you have any non-controversial hobbies? Motorcycle maintenance, perhaps?”

“ _Hobbies?_ ”

“Yes, Erik. Hobbies. You're an awful hypocrite. Not even a year ago you pointed guns at Jews, Arabs, and Gentiles alike, and now all of the sudden you're the IDF's attack dog?”

“I'M TRYING TO BUILD A HOME!” He roared, and gripped my shoulders hard enough to hurt. The black hole crackled ominously. “You smug, privileged, _racist_ -not all of us have mansions handed down to them from generation to generation. Some of us have to stake out where we belong-”

“ _I'm_ where you belong, Erik! If you'd only stop starting wars, my home could be your home. I swear, I'm the only man alive whose standard of “no murder” proves too high for his partner to bare-”

“I don't want to murder anyone!” Erik grit out, fingers loosening. “IF you'd shut up for two minutes and let me explain-”

“Tch. Explain _what_?” 

“I brought you here to stop all this. The light house isn't sustainable. I can't watch it all the time. And Israel is still small...this conflict will destroy everything. Charles...can't you get into their heads? Can't you make everyone stop? There's room for everyone here. Most people believed that, before the killing started. I'm not a maniac. What good is a Jewish state if the land's destroyed?” 

“Oh Erik. It's not that simple...”

“Maybe it is. I've seen what you can do. I believe in you, Charles. You have incredible range, I've felt it.” His right hand moved up and caressed my face. I knew I couldn't deny him anything. “Just try. A cease fire. Negotiations. Target the leadership. They're victimizing their own people, on both sides.” 

I did try. I tried my hardest, in a trance for an entire day while Erik blocked the rockets. I nearly drowned in rage, fear, greed, confusion, Arabic, English, Hebrew, and a spider's web of intrigue. At some point, Kurt returned, and Erik made me drink water and eat hummus. But my stomach was full of Kosher dairy and dates, and empty, thirsty, full of dust and choler all at once. 

When I finally surfaced, the returned night was a clear black shroud, and the storm had passed. Erik, who had been dozing in my lap, snapped awake when I moved and checked the black hole compulsively before attending me. 

“Are you alright? What's happened? There haven't been any rockets, not for half a day. Is it...?”

“Yes and no.” I answered wearily. “I do believe that if you turn on your radio tomorrow a ceasefire will be announced. But I have no idea how long it will last. It won't be permanent, I can tell you that much. This war is already a generation old, and the hate runs deep. It's not even totally about land anymore. People have lost family and are dug in on religious grounds. The US is only fueling the fire-everyone owes everyone else and the leadership is caught between a rock and a hard place. Erik...this might never end. And even if it does, it's going to take work; treaties, talks, nuts and bolts diplomacy.” I watched the resigned sadness creep into his expression, and was seized by an overwhelming surge of pity and affection. “You can't _force_ peace, my friend. But I love you dearly for trying.” 

He was silent for a long moment. Then he sighed, took off the helmet, and let it clatter to the ground. “Me too. For trying. For...come on. The X-Men are probably crashing their precious plane looking for you. I'll call Kurt-”

“Wait.” I was exhausted and freezing, but when I was young these things never stopped me. “Erik, it's a beautiful thing you tried to do here. And you saved lives, if only for a little while. Can't you ever...” My hands couldn't stop tracing him like a map. It wasn't a fever that night, but the chronic ague for him, my feral mutant who could alter the rules of physics but never found relief for his own hurts. “...savor, anything?” 

“...Do you want to? Here?”

It had been a long time. To reassure him, I skimmed the surface of his newly opened mind and projected _Want_ , soft and choppy with the lesser-voiced _Need_ at the edges, and if there was any doubt before, it dissolved in the pictures he sent back to me, fragile, see-through hopes of a Tel Aviv full of mutants, a deal with the Knesset, an official position granted for valiant spy craft, of Hanukkah, and children, and me. 

“Oh Darling,” I said, and began kissing the thin, chapped lips. “You can do better than that.” I bit his neck. “We will not be the third variable in an already fraught nation.”

“Mmm?” He hummed a question, and began removing his cumbersome uniform. 

“We will build our own country. I already have feelers out, or did you think our home stopped at the mansion?”

It was the first time I'd ever uttered out loud my ambitions for the compound in the Indian ocean, now known to all the world as Genosha. The textbooks credit him, but in recent years some brave scholars have suggested I lay the diplomatic ground work. Which, of course, is true. My husband is a hammer, but I am the blueprint that inspires the swing. 

By now he was down to his black corded sweater and boxer-briefs, working with frenetic fingers on my pajamas. His mind was full of questions, but overriding this was a certainty that I had some kind of plan, and this notion had left him hopelessly aroused. “God....Charles...” He mumbled as he tore at the last of my clothes, drawing me into his lap, searching for the boundary of feeling on my backside. 

“Well then,” I whispered. “Are you going to shag me in this place you made? My love, my architect...”

“Yes. But I ...I want...”

This was another surprising foible of ours, that when it came down to sex, I was articulate, and he was shy. 

“What does my architect want?”

He bit my earlobe and rutted against me, placing one of my hands to his temple. When he showed me, I nearly came on the spot.  
“Yes.”

I watched, entranced again, as he spread me wide then, positioning my thighs across his knees so that my hole was exposed between them and I had only his shoulders (strong pillars then and now), for purchase. When the three metal balls floated out of his pocket between our necking, I took them eagerly one by one into my mouth. 

“Get them wet,” he murmured, sucking on his own fingers briefly before returning them to my cleft, searching for the ring of muscle there. 

I moaned as he prepared me, and I in turn prepared the largest piece of metal. He was fucking me with slick fingers, even as he transformed the steel with his power into a large, rod-like shape. The two smaller pieces, meanwhile, had floated down, encircling our engorged cocks at the base in a way that sent bursts of pleasure-pain through me and made me wish his other hand would stroke us together.

“W-what brought this on?” I asked into his throat and bore down on his 3 fingers. The rod was dripping wet now, hot with spit and the electricity of it's manipulator's arousal. 

“I learned a lot this week.” Was his only answer, and I should have been jealous, but then the rod moved down and out of sight, and the fingers were gone, and there was hot metal at my entrance, and then my mate was fucking me with steel. He filled me with molten force, molding himself against my walls, stretching me out and ribbing the makeshift toy so that I felt every inch, and I in turn opened my mind to what he made me feel, riding him as best I could, bruising his shoulders as I fought for momentum.

How could one be jealous of oneself? This is what I thought in the feedback loop as he fucked me and let himself feel it, mirroring my movements and clenching around an emptiness he thought was filled. We were swallowing each other's noises, an old habit of love-making in the student-filled mansion we've never quite been able to break, and his left hand finally started to touch us. 

“Erik, please...” It was too much. The penetration and the rings, the gentle graze of rough palms across my nipples. “It hurts...I need to...”

“Savor it.” He growled, ever spiteful and oh-so-clever, and when the ring tightened even harder so that I could feel my pulse against it, I sobbed and let him take me where he would. 

“Please...”  
“I love you.”  
“Ow...”  
“You're beautiful like this.”  
“Erik...Erik...”  
“Trust me.”  
“Stay in...stay there...”  
“...Charles!”

The rings broke. Something white hot hit my chin and we came together, shaking and wrecked, in a light house with no light except our luminous dreams. 

Xxx  
40 years later, the morning after my reminiscing, my husband sits in the chrome kitchen in the Hammer Bay Palace, nursing espresso and looking like all the light has gone out of the world. 

“How are you today?” I ask, because it will do him good to talk about it. 

“Well, I slept. Dirty trick you pulled last night. Emphasis on dirty. Or was that just convenient de ja vu?” 

I pilfer a sip from his cup before pouring my own, and smile sheepishly. “I must have fallen into your sleep with it. Dr. Haller says it's normal, to dwell on times one felt most vital at the end. Rather a step up from your night terrors, at least-”

“Oh _leave_ me to my night terrors, Charles.” His raised voice never fails to startle me. “You can't fix this. You're going to...and I'll be...”

“Hush now.”

Already my head is pounding. This will be a Bad Day. I reach across the table and take his hand, spotted and gnarled, but still strong. “You'll be right where you're supposed to be. And don't you dare think for a second I won't be watching you. Where else would I go but here? Who else would I watch but you?”

“I don't know. But wherever it is...” He trails off, but the last thought wails inside our heads like a Greek dirge. 

_I can't follow you_. 

xxx

It takes six more weeks for me to die, quick and explosive in the shower when the tumor ruptures an artery once and for all. There are, for me, many paths to choose from, all involving the proverbial White Light. The hardest to resist are the rays through which I hear my old students' voices, or Raven's clear laugh, or David's gurgling childhood before he went mad. 

But I resist them all. 

I rest in limbo. 

I'm in remission.

I will become my own light house, and wait.


End file.
